


secret moments in a crowded room

by anniebrackett



Series: won't tell anybody (that you turn the world around) [2]
Category: Jurassic Park - All Media Types, Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Bystander POV, Canon Divergence, F/F, Secret Marriage, Secret Relationship, au: zara lives, claire and zara are still bad at hiding their heart eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21992089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebrackett/pseuds/anniebrackett
Summary: Five times somebody catches onto Claire and Zara’s relationship at the Dinosaur Protection Group, and the one time they go public
Relationships: Claire Dearing/Zara Young
Series: won't tell anybody (that you turn the world around) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1400914
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	secret moments in a crowded room

**Author's Note:**

> Back at it with my favourite rarepair. I just want to make it clear that although I’m writing Claire and Zara as being married in this fic, I personally don't think they would ever have children. It was a concern of mine when I first started writing this that it would seem OOC for them to get married, based on who they are as people, but I feel like, after the park collapse and Zara almost dying, they would want to make their relationship as official as possible.

Franklin Webb hears rumours about Jurassic World’s very own Operations Manager and her assistant during his time at the park. He doesn’t have much interaction with Claire or Zara, if any, so he doesn’t pay attention to what other people are saying about them, even when the rumours are all but confirmed by them moving into the same suite. He’s there to keep his head down, do his job, and avoid the dinosaurs.

At the Dinosaur Protection Group, however, it’s a different story.

Much like at Jurassic World, he just wants to do his job. Create the website, monitor the network, screen the e-mails, and ask the right questions about what their purpose is. But unlike his time at the park, he works very closely with the founding members, giving him a front row seat to their interactions, which is where he finds himself going off script.

They’re together, that much is obvious. Even if their partnership wasn’t an open secret, they’re so in sync, operating on a sphere above everybody else, that walking into their office never fails to make him feel like he’s intruding on a private moment. Asking a simple question feels like he may as well be walking through the front door of their apartment and interrupting their dinner.

“Hey, Franklin,” Zara greets him, stopping mid-sentence when he knocks on the glass office door.

He doesn’t know what they were talking about before he walked in, but based on the blush crawling up Claire’s neck, he doesn’t want to know.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Franklin starts, hovering in the door frame rather than walking fully into the office. “I, uh, was just wondering if you had the newest blog post ready for typing and publishing.”

“Right, it’s my turn this week,” Zara answers with a snap of her fingers, looking down at the carefully organized stacks of paper on her desk. “It’s good to go - I just need to find it.”

She starts searching through the pages in front of her, only breaking the patient silence to involve Claire. “Darling, did I leave it over there?”

Her tone is so absentminded, Franklin doesn’t think she even realizes her slip up. Claire does, though, and he can see her entire frame freeze behind her desk. He nervously touches his glasses and pretends not to notice.

“Oh, it’s right here.” Zara holds up a slim notepad victoriously.

Franklin smiles politely, reaching out for the draft and avoiding Claire’s gaze in the process. “I’ll take care of this. Sorry again for interrupting.”

But as his responsibilities increase, he finds his discomfort morphing into a protective loyalty.

With the limited number of people working for the DPG, Franklin takes on tasks outside of the Systems Analyst job description. These range from answering the occasional e-mail that he would typically only scan and forward on, to handling the forms an HR specialist would normally take care of.

He’s in the process of submitting the office’s health insurance forms when he first notices something amiss. Namely, that Zara lists Claire as her emergency contact and beneficiary on every form in front of him. At first he figures it must just be because they’re together, no matter how discreetly, and Zara’s family are all in England. It makes sense. But when he flips to Claire’s bundle, he finds Zara’s name neatly printed in all of the same spaces, when he knows she has a sister and an extended family in Wisconsin.

He doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions without solid proof, regardless of how suspect the information in front of him may be, so he takes it upon himself to pull up California’s vital records database, searching for Claire’s name. It takes so little time to pull up a marriage certificate declaring the legal bond between his bosses, established six months after Jurassic World’s collapse, that most of his surprise stems from the fact that no media outlet has picked up on it yet.

As the person who regularly filters through death threats e-mailed to Claire’s attention, and who manages the occasional media inquiry into the women trying to save Isla Nublar’s inhabitants, he understands very clearly why they keep this under wraps. The blowback would be severe. It would further undermine Claire’s accomplishments in the business world, while also overshadowing the DPG’s purpose, and damaging both Claire and Zara’s public images. Claire’s image has taken enough hits over the past year, while Zara’s has only ever been impacted by her work with the DPG, which many see as a good cause. If the public knew, however, that she was sleeping with her boss while engaged to somebody else, she would approach her wife’s level of social exile.

Knowing all of this, Franklin feels a bit like the front line, protecting the woman who has already lost almost everything to public scrutiny, and the one who still has so much left to lose. He takes it in stride, treating the weight as yet another responsibility of his ever-changing position. If protecting them is a part of the greater good, so be it.

 _Besides_ , he thinks, glancing at a Zara who is shamelessly flirting with Claire by the water cooler, apparently unaware that the open concept floor plan means that everybody in the office can see the way she squeezes Claire's arm to emphasize a point, _they do make a really cute couple_.

\-------------------------------

Zia Rodriguez isn’t stupid. She’s a paleo-veterinarian, for Christ’s sake. She’s also a lesbian with eyes, which is why it takes her less than a week of working at the Dinosaur Protection Group to figure out that her new bosses are together.

For starters, there are the looks between them. You don’t look at another person the way Claire and Zara look at each other without being hopelessly, sickeningly, in love, regardless of whatever traumatic event you survived together.

Claire regularly leads team meetings to generate promotional ideas, and Zia always finds herself watching Zara watching Claire, the look on the former assistant’s face practically announcing: _Claire Dearing hung the moon, didn’t you hear?_

Every time, she wants to ask Franklin if she was this lovestruck around Claire while they were at the park or if it's a new development, but something tells her he wouldn't know the answer.

Then there’s the fact that they always arrive at work together. They step off of the elevator standing close to one another, and Claire heads into their office to set her desk up for the day, leaving Zara to handle the task of passing out coffees to everybody working. She always saves Claire’s usual latte for last, presenting it to her with an overdramatic flourish that never fails to make Claire roll her eyes and smile. Despite doing this routine every morning, Zara always turns away and heads to her own desk with a proud look on her face, apparently unaware that there’s never going to be a day where Claire doesn’t find her antics amusing.

And finally, there’s the office. Sure, they’re a non-profit organization, which means there are a limited number of desks and offices available. However, Zia is sure that the two women behind the organization could manage to spring for their own offices. Instead, they choose to share a space, with two desks crammed into a room intended for one person.

She rolls her chair over to Franklin’s desk and comments on this, but rather than join her in discussing this revelation, he shushes her, waving off her observations. “They shared an office at Jurassic World, too. It’s just what they’re used to.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’re used to doing a lot of things together,” Zia scoffs. Franklin stares at his screen, pointedly ignoring her, until she gives up and gets back to work.

Although Zia was quick on the initial uptake, it takes her a little longer to clue into the full picture.

It all clicks during a particularly stressful conversation with a congressman. Claire paces in a circle around the office, something they’ve all adjusted to her doing while talking on the phone, but her movements are more frantic than usual. Zia can see Zara keeping an eye on her from the doorway to their office, the paperwork she’s pretending to review not fooling the paleo-veterinarian for a second.

Claire passes Zia’s desk and pauses, her hand pulling a chain out from under blouse and squeezing the slim gold band attached to it. The look on her face makes Zia think that it’s a subconscious effort at self-soothing, as the tone of her voice becomes increasingly agitated.

The volume of her conversation ticks up another level and Zara swoops in from Zia’s blind spot, pulling the phone out of her hand and hanging it up.

“Zara!”

“ _Claire_.”

“I know what it sounded like. But I was going to get through to him, I just needed – ”

“No, what you needed was to cut your losses,” Zara cuts her off, her hands hovering as close to Claire as they can get without actually touching her. “Yes, there are going to be people who need convincing. But there are others who are stubborn and hard-headed who we won’t be able to get through to. And you need to be able to figure out which is which, because I won’t have your blood pressure taking a hit over the latter.”

Zia can practically see Claire swallow down a rebuttal, nodding sharply instead.

What she can also see is the way that Zara quickly taps Claire’s hand twice, the one still gripping onto the ring, before turning back towards their office. Claire blushes and tucks the chain back under her blouse, and Zia chokes on a mouthful of coffee when the realization hits her.

They’re fucking _married_.

\-------------------------------

Karen stops by the Dinosaur Protection Group during the early days of development. In fact, she’s one of the very first people to see it. After everything that happened at the park, she and Claire are both making more of an effort to be a better sister, something that includes more trips to see one another.

She’s surprised that her sister is nowhere to be found. Neither is her professional-slash-personal partner. All that’s in their office are a stack of boxes and two practically bare desks. Claire’s desk doesn’t even have a computer on it yet, just a box of pens, a set of framed pictures – one of Zara, a surprisingly tourist-y shot taken at Jurassic World, one of Karen and the boys post-divorce, and one of all of them together over Christmas – and a card, laying face-down in the middle of it all.

Karen takes a step forward and picks the card up. She may be trying to be a good sister, but that doesn’t mean she’s any less nosey.

 _“Happy Anniversary!”_ The front of the card declares in bold, bright print. Below it is a cartoon of two Apatosauruses, their necks intertwining, and Karen rolls her eyes before flipping it open.

_“Claire –_

_Marrying you was the best decision I’ve ever made._

_Watching you evolve over the years, and especially over this past year, is something I am so unbelievably fortunate to be by your side for._

_I love what we've built. I love you.  
_

_Zara xx”_

Karen fumbles with the card in her rush to slap it back down on the desk where she found it, glancing around to make sure nobody witnessed her invasion of privacy. She wants to call Claire with an _I-told-you-so_ for all of the moments Claire denied ever considering marriage as a possibility for her, but she realizes, perhaps as a by-product of her growth as a person post-divorce and post-dinosaur park terror, that there must be a reason why her sister hasn’t come to her with this. Even if she doesn’t understand what that reason is, she has to respect her wishes.

She ducks out of the office after leaving a note on Zara’s desk instead – _“Sorry I missed you guys! The office looks great. Call me when you’re free. Karen.”_

Her therapist is going to hear all about this.

\-------------------------------

Eli Mills has spent the better part of the last decade putting a plan in motion that will get him everything he’s ever wanted.

So far, everything has gone according to said plan. Claire Dearing fell for every line he fed her, convincing the raptor trainer, her co-founder, and the remainder of her mismatch team to go to Isla Nublar and save the world together.

It’s funny, really, how clueless they are. How focused they are on doing _good_ that they can’t see where this is going. He’s piloting the metaphorical plane to their demise and they are so trusting, so willing to go along with what he says, that they haven’t even looked out the window to notice that something isn’t right.

As he reviews the paperwork for the flight over to the island, the end goal is so close he can practically taste it.

His hands shake slightly with anticipation as he unfolds the envelope holding the passports. What they’re doing may not be exactly legal, but they still need proper documentation for the trip there, just in case. The cover story is a humanitarian trip in Central America, which, as far as the team of misfits are concerned, isn’t too far from the truth.

He opens the first passport in the stack and scans through it briefly before moving onto the next one, repeating the process. He’s on the last passport of the group when he freezes.

Zara Young’s face stares up at him from the only British passport in the pile; all of her information matching the rest of the paperwork Eli has reviewed, except for her last name.

No, that matches Claire’s.

(Well, in the sense that it's tacked onto her own in a way that's bordering dangerously close to a portmanteau: _Zara Dearing-Young_ )

At first he thinks there must be a mix-up. But then it hits him. And when it does, when he looks back at how the DPG founders interacted during their visit to the Lockwood Estate – the back of Claire’s hand pressing subtly against Zara’s hip, ready to act as a barrier against any unknown threats in their unfamiliar surroundings, and the way she always looked to the brunette, silently communicating the pros and cons of what he was asking, before responding to any of Eli’s questions – he can’t help but smile, because things just got a lot more interesting.

\-------------------------------

After their trek to Isla Nublar and back, Owen wakes up first in the cell underneath the Lockwood Estate, Claire on the ground opposite him. She’s unconscious, but doesn’t seem to be hurt, her chest rising and falling in a consistent pattern, with a small cut on her chin that looks like it stopped bleeding before they left the island. He breathes a sigh of relief. And then he starts looking for a way out.

He’s in the middle of trying to scale up the brick wall, hoping to see Zara, or Franklin, or Zia in the cell next to them, when she wakes up.

He knows she’s on the verge of a full-blown panic attack immediately. If the choking gasp she makes when she comes to doesn’t give it away, the utter fear in her eyes would be enough to tip him off.

“Hey, hey, Claire, it’s alright,” Owen tries to reassure her with a hand on her shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

She shakes him off and inches herself towards the cell bars. “Zara – where’s Zara?”

"She's not - she's here somewhere," Owen aims for placating, but he can tell by the look Claire shoots his way that he missed the mark. "We just need to -"

Before he can offer up any further reassurances, Eli Mills is in front of them, and there's a gun pointed at their heads.

“Don’t worry, your girlfriend is sedated and locked up. She’s safe. For now.” Eli answers Claire’s question with a smarmy grin. Owen wants to smack it off his face.

Claire beats him to it, grabbing the front of Eli’s shirt and slamming him into the bars so hard his glasses crack, his crony switching the weapon's focus squarely onto her. She doesn't flinch.

“She’s my _wife_.”

Owen wishes he could be more surprised at the revelation, but it’s been a rollercoaster of a day.

Besides, he’s seen Claire with Zara, both at the park as colleagues, and at the park’s collapse when Zara’s life was in danger. If anything, he’s more surprised she didn’t marry Zara the second she woke up from surgery in the makeshift medical wing of the park. He can understand why she would want to tie herself, legally, to the woman she’s obviously loved for years; the one she almost lost along with her career.

It’s only after Eli has left them alone that the anger surrounding Claire’s presence falls away, leaving her in pieces all over again.

“What if something happened to her? What if she’s hurt again?” Claire shakily lowers herself down to the hard cement. She paws at the chain around her neck, her fist clenching and unclenching around it in a way that must be leaving a ring-shaped imprint in the palm of her hand. “She almost died because of me once already. I can’t – before we got on that plane, I promised her this would never happen again. I _promised_.”

Owen has never been very good at comforting crying women, but he tries his best, sliding down the wall to sit next to Claire, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She doesn’t shake it off this time.

“Your girl is tough,” Owen tries to channel the tone he used to use in the raptor paddock, leaving no room for argument to try and prevent Claire from spiraling any further ( _I’m not one of your damn animals_ feels like a lifetime ago). “She’s going to be fine, she’s going to find you, and then she’s going to kick your ass for blaming yourself.”

Claire’s laugh at that is watery, but it’s the best he can hope for, given the circumstances.

He’s about to bring up the fact that they still need to find a way out of here when there’s a loud crash outside of their cell.

They look up just in time to see a Stygimoloch ram into the bars before continuing down the hall. Half a breath later, a disheveled Zara shows up in front of the cell door, winded but otherwise entirely intact.

She starts fiddling with the lock that the dinosaur before her partially broke open. "I'm sorry I took so long, you would not believe what I had to -" She stops suddenly, squinting through the bars, her harried demeanor shifting into a noticeably more concerned one. "Darling, why are you crying?"

Owen tosses Claire a look that she conveniently misses.

\-------------------------------

It’s a new world. Zara professionally takes on Claire’s last name, quietly asking Franklin to update her bio on the DPG website. They may have accomplished their initial purpose, but the organization is still up and running, focused on protecting the rights of Isla Nublar’s former inhabitants as they now exist off of the island. They both start wearing their rings on the proper fingers, as opposed to on a chain, and they add their courthouse wedding photos to the frames on their desks.

Although the two women involved hold their breath, waiting for the negative blowback, nobody even so much as raises an eyebrow outside of a handful of sidebar news mentions. It might have something to do with the dinosaurs that are now loose in their everyday lives, which is the story they both stick to, or it could be the fact that they, for all of their efforts, have never been the most discreet couple in the history of dinosaur theme parks, but nobody is going to tell them that.

“Do you still think this was the best decision you’ve ever made?” Claire asks, linking her right hand with Zara’s left, watching the way her ring glints in the early morning light of their bedroom.

“I _know_ it is,” Zara murmurs, rolling over to wrap her arm around Claire’s midsection, her hand splaying across the other girl’s bare stomach and her head resting in the crook of her neck. “A close second, though, is finally being open about this. We're not something I ever want to have to hide again.”

Claire hums in response, pressing a kiss to the top of Zara’s head and ignoring the sudden lump in her throat. Whenever she thinks about how close she came - _twice_ \- to losing the girl laying across her before anyone even knew, officially, that she was hers, her chest feels heavy. To offset the brick currently making itself comfortable on her sternum, she presses a second and third kiss to the same spot, before eventually giving in, tilting Zara’s very pretty, sleepy face up to her own.

Outside of their apartment, a group of herbivores make their presence known, and it finally feels like home.

**Author's Note:**

> In case I didn’t make it clear during the story, here’s a rough timeline for the period between JW1 and JW2, based off of the JP wiki, with some of my own zearing additions:  
> \- December 2015: Park collapse  
> \- June 2016: Claire and Zara get married  
> \- February 2017: Mount Sibo is reported as being active again  
> \- March 2017: Zara and Claire begin development on the DPG  
> \- June 2017: Claire and Zara’s first anniversary, DPG is now open  
> \- Fall 2018: JW2 events


End file.
